The Quickie (2001)

Captivating movie !

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This is not a bad movie. Actually it is magnificent. I was searching for it for 4 years I guess and I finally got it. This movie, of course, can't be understood by Americans :)). So, dear potential viewer, don't believe comments made from US :). Don't watch the mob boss. Watch a guy (Russian guy, if you wish) who was gambling big. That is what the movie is about. About beauty and gambling for choices of the great thing called life. Mob factor is just an additional detail... just like in Godfather. That is not the main point of the movie. I agree that direction and actors (not the things they were supposed to do, but actors themselves) could be different (except Mashkov, he did well as always), but it doesn't shadow the whole movie.

This minor independent is not nearly as bad it's being made out to be if one goes beyond the plot device and into the psychology of the protagonists, Leigh and Mashkov, who seem to convey the kind of hopeless boredom with their life circumstances that explains a lot of their behavior rather thoughtfully. Particularly notable is the way the film uses the destructive characteristics of marriage and family as the contributing factors to the decadence and corruption of nearly everyone in the story. Interestingly ambivalent and observant look at moral decay.

I saw this movie on the movie channel and unfortunately missed the first few minutes of the film but found the rest of it intriguing. None of it made any sense, of course but I found myself unable to turn it off. The whole thing had a dreamlike quality to me. What the heck was the bug lady doing in this film, anyway? Was the lead guy a mob boss or a tap dancer turned to crime in order to make a living?In spite of the shortcomings, I really liked the soundtrack. Especially haunting were the songs by the Tiger Lillies.My advice is to forget the movie and buy the soundtrack (if you can find it anywhere - which I have not been able to do).

"The Quickie" tells of a decadent Russian mob family who lives in Malibu and...well, frankly, this awful attempt at drama isn't worthy of commentary.Jason Leigh introduces herself to Mr. Mob-guy as being from "Pacific Exterminators" with huge letters in plain sight on her back which say "West Coast Exterminators". Eventually the mob-guys get suspicious because she was exterminating in a bedroom. (duh).In another scene Mr. Mobguy plays Russian roulette giving a hooker $4000 to bet whether he'll live or die. She has 5 chances out of 6 of keeping the money if she bets "live". Well, she bets "die". (double duh) Later she complains it wasn't fair and wants to play again. (Triple duh). The list of flaws just goes on and on while this intelligence insulting film stinks and sinks in a quagmire of lousy music, mediocre camera work, poor direction, boring story, etc. Pass on this loser. (D)Note - The barebones DVD which I rented had no English same language subtitles or closed captions.